and this gives frankly, this gives the white house and this gives the obama administration much more bargaining leverage. >> grover norquist, here's the problem, it seems to me. again, as long as the posturing goes on with fairly ridiculous offers on both sides and lots of political rhetoric along the lines of well, they're not giving an inch, we're going backwards, you can't really go backwards from a position of complete standstill, as far as i'm concerned. as this goes on, the american economy stalls, wall street's nervous, the consumers that should be out there now buying lots of christmas presents and boosting the economy will be reticent because they'll be thinking hang on, what's going to happen come the end of the year, am i suddenly going to have to find more money. everything starts to once again get paralyzed and somebody's got to give here. now, are the republicans prepared to go over this cliff on the pure point of refusing to allow increased income tax on the richest 2% of the country? and if so, why? it's such a small thing to fall over a cliff over, isn't it? who care